Software Released Early and Often Is Better

How releasing software frequently benefits everyone

Photo by Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash.

A decade ago, I worked on a software product that had two major releases each year. Today, I work on software that has a weekly release cadence.

Switching from a six-month release cycle to a weekly release cycle did make me feel nervous and wonder if everything was going to fall apart. After experiencing it for a while, it is so good! Here’s why.

1. Less Code Gets Shipped With Each Release

Instead of having a six-month flurry of changes, shipping it each week will reduce the number of changes. This usually results in more stable software.

Besides, testing also gets simpler, as the code changes have dramatically reduced for the release. Not too many new features need to be tested concurrently.

Note: In the event that we have some uncompleted features, the changes are switched off behind the toggle. It often got tested internally with the fully released software.

2. Developers Are More Cautious of Merging Code Into Master

Unlike in a six-month release cycle, each developer will not have a few months to internally test code they merged into the…